I HAD never heard of fairies until one autumn evening in our summer
home on the highlands of Petsą, which, eagle-like, watches over
olive groves, raisin fields and the blue Corinthian Gulf. Laughter and
voices raised in greeting woke me from my early sleep and told me that
my Grandmother Adamis was being welcomed to the group of neighbor women
who had gathered in our garden to tell stories in the moonlight.

"Is it about the Fairy Wife you are going to tell us tonight,
Grandmother Adamis?" I heard someone ask.

"Or the Fairy Ring? I thought it was the Fairy Ring!" cried another
voice.

"Oh, the fairies’ palace, Grandmother! You promised to tell us
about their palace!"

Grandmother Adamis laughed. Rising on my elbow, I could see the younger
women hurrying to make a place for her and pass her wine, nuts and
cheese. In the center of the group a fire glowed red, in contrast to
the clear, silver light of the full moon above. During the autumn
months, after the corn is gathered, the grapes crushed and the barrels filled with wine,
the villagers spend the evenings out of doors. The older women talk
while the girls knit and sing. Now, on Grandmother's arrival, the girls
dropped their work and all grew silent to listen. Grandmother knew more
paramythia, myths, than any woman in Eurostena, and she was a born
story-teller.

In wonder and a breathless, ecstatic fear, I strained my ears to catch
what snatches I could. As the strange stories followed one another,
forms, pentamorphes, five times beautiful, seemed to glide before me:
maidens in white with flowing, golden hair, handsome youths on
horseback, chariots of cloud, seas shimmering with jewels, palaces
light as foam and lovely as dew in sunshine. Oh, if I could see these
things which Grandmother Adamis described! If I could hear the
flute-like voices and silvery music which she said rang through the
Fairy Hills!

But the fairies, it seemed, had some terrible, mysterious power. One
must beware. One must not venture alone too high among the mountain
tops. The fairies might—Grandmother's voice would sink to a
whisper and the circle of heads draw closer about her. I could learn
only that all places are safe for him who carries a loaded gun, the
highest hills and even the palaces of the fairies. With this thought,
as the moon paled and the dawn came and the group in the garden
dispersed, I slept.

A gun! That was my first idea on waking. I must have a gun. I intended
to see fairies and visit fairy palaces, but where to find the gun? Then I remembered. As soon as I had learned to write
at school, an old lady who lived in the neighborhood asked me to write
letters for her to her son in America, because she could not write. The
first time I went to her house, I noticed a huge, old-fashioned gun
hanging on the wall. It had been used, she told me, by her grandfather
in the War of 1821, and was called a Karabena. It was very clumsy and
had grown rusty, but now as I pictured it, it seemed the most priceless
of treasures. There remained only the question of how to make it mine.

For months, whenever I was in the old lady's house, I gazed longingly
at the Karabena every moment that I was not writing, and wondered how I
could approach the subject. Then one day the following spring, the lady
told me that I had been very good and that she wished to give me
something in return for what I had done.

"Will you give me that gun?" I burst out.

"Oh, not that," she said. "You don't know how to use it. You would hurt
yourself."

I replied that I knew a great deal about guns from having read about
them ever since the autumn. Besides, I said, I would accept nothing
else from her, so at last she consented. The Karabena was mine.

It remained hidden for days among the barrels in our cellar, while I
cleaned and polished it a little at a time, and collected powder and
shot. Finally the gun was loaded and ready, and very proudly did I set
out with it across my shoulder. From the stories of Grandmother Adamis,
I understood that the fairies often appeared just at noon, but I started early since
it was some distance to the top of the Neraidorahe, Fairy Hill, where
the entrances to fairy palaces were said to be found. I was
congratulating myself on getting away unseen, when my mother's voice
called from the doorway.

"Theodorake, come back. Where did you get that gun?"

When I told her, she asked what I was about to do with it. My answer
was sufficiently evasive.

"Well," she said, "don't try to shoot and whatever you do, don't go up
to the Neraidorahe! Evil will come to you!"

After waiting till she had returned to her work, I hurried through the
village and started up the mountain.

"Ho, Theodorake!" rang out above me. The old shepherd known to everyone
as Uncle Kostas was making his way down the slope toward me. Since I
was in no mood for further interruption, I pressed on as if I had not
heard.

"Ho there!" came the call again. "I know you, son of Perikles. Where
are you going with that Karabena?"

"To the Neraidorahe to hunt fairies," I replied casually.

"Stop!" He was directly above me now and he planted himself in my way.
The picture of him, in his great, loose shepherd's cloak, with its
pointed hood thrown back, his short, full skirt and his brown shoes
with a fluffy red ball on each pointed tip, is still vivid in my mind.
"See those hills yonder," he cried, his right hand extended in a
dramatic gesture, his white hair blowing in the wind. "On one of those
hills the fairies overpowered me. You do not know what they can do.
Listen to me. I was older than you are and I had a better gun
than your Karabena. A gun cannot save you. The fairies carried me away
and kept me for a year and a day, and it was only by a miracle that I
escaped from them. They can take you as they took me, but you may never
get away. Listen to one who has lived in their palace and learned their
ways and been their prisoner!"

Old Uncle Kostas with the help of his staff settled himself heavily on
a stone in order to relate his adventure. This was my chance.

"The fairies will not scare me," I told him. "I will fire at them and
chase them back into their caves."

I darted past him and went on up the mountain side. When I glanced back
and saw him plodding slowly downward shaking his head, I laughed to
myself. I would show them all.

In the steep, rocky slope above me were several great, black holes like
yawning cavern mouths. Perhaps, I thought, these opened on
moonlight-flooded gardens and shining palaces and all the beautiful
things Grandmother had described. If I could frighten the fairies, I
could enter unharmed and see for myself. Carefully I approached the
holes, lay down behind a pine tree and made my Karabena ready to shoot
at the first fairy that should appear.

Soon I heard the whistle of the noon train and I watched it far below
as it hurried along the southern shore of the Gulf. The time had come.
For a moment everything was still. Then the gently stirring air brought
me a soft, whirring sound that grew louder and louder. The air itself, moving faster and
faster, became a wind from the north, and at the same time in front of
one opening something white went whirling around and around just above
the ground.

A wild fear rushed upon me. The unknown terrors that were whispered of
in the garden and the weird power that had seized Uncle Kostas, seemed
to grip my heart. Clutching my gun I turned and tore down the mountain
side like one mad. I slipped and stumbled, struck my feet against
stones and scratched my arms on tree trunks, but nothing stopped me
until I reached home and fell into the kitchen in front of my mother. I
accepted her scolding humbly and never again did I go fairy-hunting.